IPA chart

Hover over or focus any symbol to see its name, such as voiced dental fricative for ð. Click it to add it to the box at the top, where you can type as well, then copy the whole transcription. The box stays at the top of the screen as you scroll down the chart.

Each row is a manner of articulation, how the air is let through: stopped completely for a plosive, through the nose for a nasal, squeezed through a narrow gap for a fricative. Each column is a place, where in the mouth that happens, from the lips on the left to the throat on the right. Where two symbols share a cell, the left one is voiceless and the right one voiced: p and b differ only in voicing: the vocal folds buzz for b and stay still for p.

Grey cells are sounds the chart judges impossible, such as a nasal made in the throat, where air can't reach the nose. Empty white cells have no symbol of their own on the chart; a sound there, if a language has it, is written with a diacritic.

The vowel chart is a rough map of the mouth, facing left. Up and down is how high the tongue is, from close (i, u) to open (a, ɑ); left to right is how far forward it is, from front (i) to back (u). Where vowels sit in pairs, the right one is said with rounded lips: i and y have the same tongue position, but y is said with the lips pushed forward, as in French tu.

English uses only some of these. In a standard American transcription, the consonants are p b t d k ɡ, tʃ dʒ, f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h, m n ŋ, l ɹ, w and j. The English r is usually written ɹ, the alveolar approximant, because r on the chart is the rolled r of Spanish perro. For a word-by-word transcription, try English to IPA.